Tag: Rick Lanman

Could Fish Victory become Beaver Victory?

heidi08 Beavers and salmon, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History June 12, 2014

Salmon win court ruling that ‘sets aside’ Marin countywide plan

In a sharply critical decision that leaves Marin’s planning document in legal limbo, an appellate court ordered more analysis of how development affects San Geronimo Valley’s endangered coho salmon.

The ruling by the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco reversed a Marin Superior Court decision, “sets aside” the 2007 countywide plan and its environmental report pending study of the impact of creekside building on salmon, and declared that a building ban was improperly imposed in San Geronimo.

Did you read about the Marin appellate decision protecting salmon? Our friends at SPAWN took the powers that be to court with the backing of some 22 conservation organizations and won a decision that is making no friends among the developers.

Fishery activists at the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network of Forest Knolls, which contested county compliance with state environmental law and sued to get tougher creekside building rules, hailed the ruling as a triumph. “We hope that after this decision, county supervisors are ready to work together so we can save these species from extinction,” said Todd Steiner, head of the salmon network.

“The judges agreed with Spawn that the county acted unlawfully because the environmental impact report provides no help to decision-makers or the public to understand the likely consequences of allowable build out,” said Deborah Sivas of Stanford Law School’s Environmental Clinic, which represented the salmon network along with attorney Michael Graf.

If that name sounds vaguely familiar, it should. Michael Graf was the attorney who represented Worth A Dam in the failed effort to stop the sheet pile from going through the beaver lodge. Remember? He generously charged us very little and got his friend the geomorphologist to walk our creek and do the same. The city didn’t mind breaking the law anyway, but that’s blood under the bridge now. Seems like eons ago that I was worried the sheet pile would kill the beavers or drive them away. Congratulations Michael and SPAWN for a fight well won!

All this lays the foundation for the NEXT lawsuit to appear in Marin. One where trapping ‘nuisance’ beavers is considered a threat to the salmon population. What’s that you say, beavers weren’t native to Marin? (Or Alameda? Or San Jose?) Guess what was published and went online yesterday?

Here’s the abstract, but you really need to go read the whole thing. Eli’s graphs are stunning.

The North American beaver (Castor canadensis ) has not been considered native to the watersheds of coastal California or the San Francisco Bay Area. These assertions form the basis of current wildlife management policies regarding that aquatic mammal, and they date to the first half of the 20th century. This review challenges those long-held assumptions based on verifiable (physical) and documented (reliable observational) records. Novel findings are facilitated by recently digitized information largely inaccessible prior to the 21st century. Understanding that beaver are native to California’s coastal watersheds is important, as their role in groundwater recharge, repair of stream channel incision, and restoration of wetlands may be critically important to the conservation of threatened salmonids, as well as endangered amphibians and riparian-dependent birds,

The timing on this could NOT be better, as we head off to the Salmonid Restoration Conference this week. It ends with a piercing reminder of how important beavers are to salmon, which I’m hoping the timing of the Marin decision bumps into the news cycle. There are a lot of parts I love about this paper, and Rick’s son did a stunning job of pulling the whole thing together, but you’ll pardon me if this is my very favorite part:

Today California’s coastal beaver are widely regarded as the non-native survivors of twentieth century translocations, and when they cause flooding problems or fell trees, depredation permits are often provided. Understanding beaver as native to coastal ecosystems may impact this decision-making.

Of course, I would have phrased less subtly, like STOP PRETENDING YOU’RE KILLING BEAVERS BECAUSE THEY AREN’T NATIVE, IDIOTS, but this paper and the sierra ones should permanently bury the myths about beaver absence from most of California.

49 other states never believed it anyway. I’m glad we finally tackled the 50th.

A new [John] Day is dawning…

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Environmental, Why We Care January 11, 2014

“Beaver” dams aid fish restoration in John Day River drainage

Ecologists and biologists working in a tributary of the John Day River in northeast Oregon are encouraging the building of dams to restore degraded stream habitat – beaver dams, that is.

The stream recovery operation has already significantly increased wild juvenile steelhead survival in Bridge Creek as opposed to the control tributary Murderers Creek.

The researchers from NOAA Fisheries Science Center in Seattle did this by increasing the local beaver population’s ability to maintain long-term and stable beaver dams. The outcome is a healthier stream habitat that is less channelized and has less annual erosion from floods.

Here’s a lovely article about our friends working at John Day, who are making ‘starter dams’ to increase the staying power of beaver dams along this watershed with significant results. Maybe you’re thinking, ” I don’t have any friends at John Day” – but you’d be wrong. Click on the video in the left hand margin (or below) and you’ll recognize the players, including Dr. Michael Pollock who will be presenting on this very topic at our beaver seminar at the salmonid restoration federation conference. He actually grew up in Walnut Creek so he’s an old local. Here he is visiting with me and the dams in Martinez:

Biologists will continue to monitor both the stream’s health and the health of the threatened steelhead in the stream. They are also considering expanding the techniques used in this project to the remainder of Bridge Creek. In the meantime, Pollock is fielding phone calls from interested agencies throughout the West, his crew is producing a how-to manual and they will hold workshops on their techniques in the winter of 2014-15.

“It’s been exciting to see the number of agencies interested in using beavers for stream habitat recovery,” Pollock said. “It’s an affordable technique and very effective.”

Pollock is one of the key players that was so famous and busy he never wrote me back after all my many emails until our own wikipedia Rick tracked him down and got him to be a reviewer on our Sierra paper. When I was invited to speak at the state parks conference in Yosemite I asked him and Rick to come as well. They both accepted and we drove in Rick’s Range Rover up and back in 24 hours. We drank too much wine and had a glorious dinner at the Tenaya lodge with some overly attentive waiters. The best part of the entire trip was when he showed a photo of a nutria in his talk instead of a beaver. Cheryl and I said nothing but exchanged THAT LOOK which he did not miss. (I dare say he will never, ever make that mistake again.) Here he is with Cheryl and Rick in front of my house after our marathon drive.

What a good article to wake up to! I can’t wait to hear the updates in Santa Barbara. All people should care about beavers for their own sake. They’re fun to watch, good at what they do and helpful to wildlife. Bur even if they don’t – we might be able to get them to care about beavers for steelhead’s sake.

Something’s fishy in Taylor Creek

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Festival, Who's Killing Beavers Now? December 30, 2013

Attentive readers might remember the ongoing saga of Taylor Creek in South Lake Tahoe. It is off highway 89 between Lake Tahoe and Fallen Leaf Lake. It was the subject of one of the best beaver dissertations, pointing out how beaver dams in the creek were helpful for preventing silt from getting to the lake. It was also the site of the well-attended Kokanee salmon festival, in which the non-native salmon is famously celebrated. And the naturally occurring beaver dams are removed to protect the unnaturally occurring pretend salmon.

When this was repeatedly pointed out to the good folks of USDA and mentioned in Tom Knudson’s 2012 article, the name was mysteriously changed to the “Fall Fish Festival” and refocused on small native species like that live in Lake Tahoe and its rivers. “In addition to the Kokanee, these species include the federally threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout and little-known smaller fish, such as speckled dace.”Since this coincided with the publication of our beaver nativity papers for the Sierra Nevadas, the issue had some heft and was read written and discussed in all the local papers.

Things have proceeded at a glacial pace of supposed progress with their attitude towards beavers, allowing for some conversations with our beaver friends in the area. Trees have been wrapped but flow devices have been resisted. Dams were originally removed because they ruined things for the pretend salmon, and now they’re removed because the say they’re worried about the trails. All offers of help installing a flow device to control pond height have been soundly rebuffed.

Sherry Guzzi of the Sierra Wildlife Coalition wrote me the following this December:

I went down the day before, to check out parking and access, and found the beaver dam intact (photo, 12-11-13). When we met the next day the dam had been removed completely (12-12-13). I went back yesterday and the beaver was seen by several people as early as 3pm, and came back out and let me watch him/her for an hour between 4 and 5, while he/she rolled and carried rocks with his/her front paws to start to rebuild a small dam on a side channel. (The FS had destroyed both the main dam and a smaller one on the man-made channel that comes back into the creek from their display.)

Are we surprised that they waited to do this until the park was snowed in and closed for the season? Of course not. Are we surprised the they waited to do this until the river was iced and the beavers food source was frozen entirely? Sadly less so. Here’s what that little beaver was facing.
Sherry checked with team beaver about what to do. The ‘change from inside the system’ champions were less alarmed but said they would continue to pressure them. The ‘change from outside the system’ (Worth A Dam et al) were alarmed and recommended keeping an eye on the beaver and pushing public response in spring, since they seemed unlikely to do more until the thaw.

Yesterday Sherry sent me these. Not only does the beaver have a partner helping him. He has a family.

Here are some reasons why this is a very bad idea for their fall fish friends. To summarize: a shallow streams means ponds freeze solid and the fish you are celebrating, die.

Role of stream ice on Fall and Winter Movements and Habitat Use by Bull Trout and Cutthroat Trout in Montana Headwater Streams Jakober Transactions American Fisheries Society 1998

Winter habitat of selected stream fishes and potential impacts from land use activity Cunjak RA Can J Fish Aquat Sciences 1996

Winter stream conditions and use of habitat by Brook trout in High-elevation Wyoming Streams Chisholm Transactions Amer Fisheries Society 1987

I would consider these a very powerful set of arguments. Heart string-tugging photos to move public opinion and a full quiver of science to begin to change minds. Good work. Keep us posted. Thanks Sherry and team beaver!

In Good Company

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental December 6, 2013

The lineup for the Salmonid Restoration Federation Conference was just published and I had to share a slice. Don’t you want to be there? You know you really should.

And as IF that wasn’t exciting enough, look at the team I’m playing for!

In case you need reminders, the first speaker is ‘Wikipedia Rick’ the senior author on both our Historic prevalance papers, and the second name is Eli Asarian who did the maps and graphs for both papers. Then that crazy lady from Martinez who probably needs no introduction. And after me is Michael Pollock who did pretty much every research on beavers and salmon EVER. Then Tim Robinson who is running the whole show and invited me to speak. Then Kate Lundquist from the OAEC who many of you met at this year’s beaver festival and finally the only person I don’t know but am very excited to hear! (And for us non-fish-scientists in the room, “thermal refugia” means moving to a hangout place that has colder temperatures. I looked it up.)

Wait, there’s more:

Ann Riley is the author of the most famous creek restoration book ever, and partner of Lisa Owens Viani who has been a Worth A Dam supporter since way back in the beginning. You might also recognize the name of Mike Vukman who used to be on the Urban Creeks Council and was a big help during our sheetpile fiasco. Now he’s in the private sector working for Stantec, but still a friend of beavers. Ann and Lisa are regulars guests at our Worth A Dam New Year’s ravioli feed and Ann asked me to talk about what beavers have done in our urban stream. (They are sitting together at the back.)

Oh and the best part of all this? I found out that the conference program had been released by a woman I don’t know from Napa RCD who saw it the beaver workshop and thought I’d be interested! Turns out the folks in Napa have used this website to help with beavers the growing beaver population in Napa and she’s happens to be a friend of Ann’s.

All in all it’s very exciting, and I couldn’t be prouder to be included! See you in Santa Barbara?

Excitements

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Burrowing Owls, City Reports, Environmental, Festival, History July 24, 2012

Beaver concerns boil over in London at city hall meeting

By Angela Mullins Metro London

Call it a battle for the beavers.

Animal activists, including those on the city’s Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, want to see councillors pass new rules for how the woodland creatures — and their dams — are handled in the city.

“Typically in London, trapping is used. That’s the archaic method,” said Deb Harris, who until last month sat on the committee and is continuing to work on the issue. “Other municipalities have employed non-lethal alternatives successfully.”

No no no, you haven’t gone back in time 5 years and history is not repeating itself. This story is from Guelph Canada. (And I just met someone who explained that this doesn’t rhyme with ‘elf’ just so you know) Ahh it brings back memories though doesn’t it?

Tempers flared in the beaver debate Monday when city staff asked council’s planning and environment committee for permission to continue trapping the animals if they pose harm to infrastructure, like drains.

That, members of the animal welfare committee, flies in the face of a June council decision requiring that administrators trap no more beavers until a report on other means of warding off the creatures is heard.

Coun. Bud Polhill, chair of the planning committee, pulled administrators’ request off the consent agenda, asking that a report come back at a later date with more information.

Members of the animal welfare group, who said they didn’t know about the staff request until late Sunday, hope that means they’ll get a chance to state their case. They’re prepared to make a report, recommending the city consider using tools to ward off the wildlife instead of removing those that pose a threat.

Oh how exciting! Tempers flaring! City staff pontificating! Passionate pedestrians protesting! Are these meetings video taped? I’d love to watch with some popcorn and a nice bottle of this…

Need more good news? The proofs came this weekend for our historic beaver prevalence articles…we are really being published – which means a century of misunderstanding is really about to be overturned!